TODAY: Defence denied 10 witnesses in Pussy Riot trial; Seliger camp looks to diversify; Alexander Lebedev contemplates business exit from Russia. Worrying poverty statistics; IMF sees changes needed to Russia’s economic model; Syria seeks loan from Moscow

‘Even in Soviet times, in Stalin’s times, the courts were more honest than this one’: the words of Pussy Riot lawyer Nikolai Polozov, after the defence was denied a request to call 13 witnesses, among them opposition leader Alexei Navalny.  The Moscow Times reports on how the famously pro-Kremlin Seliger youth camp has attempted to re-brand itself.  Putin critic and tycoon Alexander Lebedev, who says his ‘business has been deliberately and continuously destroyed by Division K of the Federal Security Service’s economic security department’ has told the press he is mulling a sale of his business assets in Russia.